


The Safety of Tangled Limbs

by ZiGraves



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Blow Jobs, M/M, Multi, Sleepy Cuddles, Threesome - M/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-06
Updated: 2014-03-06
Packaged: 2018-01-14 18:15:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1276122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZiGraves/pseuds/ZiGraves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been a long, tiring day. Sometimes, all you can do is cuddle up on the sofa with those you love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Safety of Tangled Limbs

**Author's Note:**

> I was prompted into writing some Cecearlos, so here it is.

They filter home one at a time, flopping with varying degrees of resigned exhaustion onto the sofa. Carlos is the last in the door, and doesn’t even look at the armchair before he drops his labcoat on the floor and drapes himself limply over Cecil and Earl’s laps instead.

There’s a worn-out silence between the three of them for several long minutes, before Carlos makes a vague groaning sound and attempts to roll over into something more comfortable. His elbow, bony at the best of times, jabs sharply into Earl’s thigh and elicits a formless noise of complaint and a half-hearted swat until he settles back down.

“We should…” Cecil begins, one hand making a shape indicative of nothing at all. He tries again, after a minute. “We should get dinner, at some point.”

“Mm.”

“Probably.”

No one moves to get up. Carlos, in fact, burrows even more comfortably into the cushion of laps and sofa he’s laying across, and it’s only when Earl’s legs go tense under him and something firm prods him in the cheek that realisation filters through his tired brain. He mumbles apologetically into the sand-coloured trousers, but doesn’t move. He’s far too comfortable now, with the heat of Earl’s physiological response warming the pleasant pillow of thigh and crotch under his cheek, and with Cecil’s hands tracing slow, idle circles up and down the side of his legs where they pin Cecil to the sofa.

“Carlos… either stop breathing on my cock, or do something, would you?” Earl says, when it becomes clear that the hot dampness of Carlos’ slow breathing isn’t likely to move or abate of its own accord. He doesn’t sound like he has the energy to do anything about it himself, and his complaint comes with no attempt to enforce it. Cecil snickers, staring up at the ceiling with his head resting on the sofa’s low back, but stops quickly when Carlos squirms again and brings a knee dangerously close to his testicles.

Trying to ease himself out from under Carlos’ legs would involve both moving and no longer being on the sofa, neither of which he’s quite sure he could manage. He shoves himself a little further up the sofa instead, until he’s pressed side by side with Earl and Carlos’ knees are draped safely away from anything delicate.

The silence stretches out for another few minutes, until Earl squirms in an attempt to dislodge Carlos, who seems to be on the verge of sleep.

“So… how was everyone’s day?” Cecil asks the ceiling. Carlos tenses and Earl answers.

“All day in the sand wastes. Turns out they still haven’t finished processing my return to corporeality paperwork and you need half a basilisk for that. Exactly half. I need to go back out tomorrow, all I got was two-thirds of one.”

“Oh,” says Cecil.

“Yeah.”

“Well, I got threatened with disciplinary action by Lauren because apparently I wasn’t being subtle when I aired that segment about… um. About which I am contractually obligated not to specify or make identifying reference to on or off air. Except that I’m not sure what their idea of disciplinary action is? You know? Because I’m already being paid in scrip and it’s not like old management is still around with the Dark Box, but Daniel was saying something about attitude improvement seminars and just, ugh.” Cecil’s head, lifted long enough to deliver his monologue, flops back onto the sofa with a faint thud. His hand strays along Carlos’ side, petting in slow, lazy arcs that can feel the tension hiding just under the thin layers of clothing and skin.

Carlos’ turn to speak is conspicuous in its absence of anything like speech. He makes a small, muffled noise that might be a sob or might be a laugh, and it takes Earl petting through his hair and Cecil kneading at his shoulder before he can be induced to explain.

“The Erlenmeyer flasks gained sentience this afternoon,” he says, his voice high and flat with the effort to contain excitement and horror. “And they want employee benefits or they’re walking out and taking the mass spectrometer with them. The graduated cylinders have started talking about unionising. And the pipettes took a lunch break. You don’t - you don’t even want to know what happened to the petri dishes. You don’t.” His shoulders are shaking with something which could as easily be total horror as scientific enthusiasm, but both Cecil and Earl know that if it were the latter they wouldn’t have seen Carlos until much, much later in the evening if at all.

The silence takes hold again, heavier with the weight of all three days upon it, and Carlos pushes back into the warm, dark comfort of human flesh under well-worn fabric, wriggling up closer against Earl and Cecil. Earl says nothing this time, though his breath hitches when he realises that Carlos isn’t just cuddling but has started to mouth at him through his trousers. His hands push through Carlos’ hair with increased urgency.

Cecil feels the little shift in Earl more than he hears it, turning instinctively to curl in toward them both. The hand not still kneading at Carlos’ shoulder slides over Earl’s shoulders instead, pulling him in for a gentle kiss that turns halfway through into a sigh that anticipates… something. Anything, maybe, to be rid of the day’s lingering tensions.

Draped as he is, it’s almost impossible for Carlos to get a hand to where he needs it to unbutton Earl’s fly without elbowing someone in the process. He noses instead, pushing at the crease of fabric where Earl’s shirt is tucked in, pushing at the taut pull of fabric over Earl’s steadier firmer erection. Earl takes the hint, not entirely distracted by Cecil’s affections, and momentarily lifts his hand from Carlos’ hair to undo all the impediments of tailoring that bar his way.

Cecil’s hand moves up from Carlos’ shoulder, coiling into his hair instead, scratching at the nape of his neck and rubbing the sensitive spot behind the ear that he’s long since learned is uniquely pleasant for Carlos. Carlos murmurs, soft and wordless, in appreciation, and the stress is starting to bleed out from him with the distractions of touch, scent, warmth, affection. He props himself up on Earl’s thigh just long enough to rearrange himself one more time, curling his legs in against Cecil’s side, wrapping an arm about Earl’s waist and sliding the other down to palm, gently and without aim, at the front of Cecil’s pants.

Cecil’s hand stutters in his hair for half a moment before it resumes carding and combing, and neither Cecil nor Earl see the fond smile that quirks his lips before he’s mouthing again, his lips meeting bare skin in a way that makes Earl twitch, whole-bodied, and whine into Cecil’s mouth.

There is awkwardness, still, in trying to fit three bodies together into a space that was planned for two, but it is worth it. It is always worth it. It’s worth it when Carlos licks, pauses,  _sucks_ and Earl goes almost rigid for a moment, it’s worth it when Cecil is reminded in every little shiver of his body just how much love his childhood friend has and how much endless affection dwells within his scientist. It’s worth it when the day’s burdens are lifted, dissolved by the softness and sweetness of slow and lazy desire.

Carlos is still only half-hard when Earl comes, and generously he puts it down, as he always does, to Earl’s recent return to corporeality leaving him sensitive in ways that an uninterrupted body would never be. He knows, too, that his tendency to swallow deeply doesn’t help matters. He stays cuddled right where he is, though, content to be petted by hands in his hair and to nose gently at the sparse scattering of curled hair that peeks out between Earl’s shirt and pants. His hand on Cecil works his belt free without needing any visual input, slides in between neatly pressed dress pants and outlandishly patterned shirt, and continues to palm with no other goal but to enjoy the weight and contact and intimacy of it.

He is loved, he knows this as well. They are loved, all three of them, and the quiet, wet sounds of lips and tongues above him serve to set a pace for the unhurried movement of his hand when his fingers finally wrap around Cecil’s cock. He feels Cecil’s groan reverberate through Earl, who is still valiantly trying to engage, to kiss and stroke, though orgasm always hits him with a wave of tiredness more effective than any exertions in the Sand Wastes.

Cecil is, of the three of them, the least physically run-down. He has not been hiking through endless sands or chasing errant sample dishes all day, but his sedentary work and the pressures of management have taken their own particular toll. Carlos brings his knees up just a fraction closer, a degree or two tighter against Cecil, his hand squeezing gently as his thumb rounds over the head of Cecil’s cock. Of them, Cecil is the one who gives the most, in his way, and who is depleted and empty after a job that asks more and more every day, and he is the one who will never  _ask_ to feel wanted, but will  _need_ it the most.

Carlos adores him. He thinks Earl adores him in a slightly different way, and he loves Earl for that, for his ability to love in ways that aren’t caught under ciphers and scientific symbols and stuttering, hesitant jargon. He wriggles, a little out of Earl’s lap and a little more into Cecil’s, to get his hand at an angle that doesn’t threaten sore joints later, and to be able to push his head up against Cecil’s endlessly stroking fingertips. Earl is slumping, anyway, even with his best efforts, and they’ll need to get off the couch soon if any of them want to sleep in a bed that night.

It doesn’t take too much more to bring Cecil off, not with Carlos and Earl both giving him whatever attention they can still muster after their respective days, and he comes with a tiny, choked sob at odds with the depth of his voice, clutching both of them close and holding, tight and warm and desperately needy, until the aftershocks have quite faded. Carlos doesn’t give much thought to whether it’s his shirt or Cecil’s that he wipes his hand on, distracted more by the lure of rest. Maybe he’s halfway hard from the constant petting and from knowing he got both of them off just the way they needed, but it’s nothing worth bothering over, nothing that won’t go down, ignored, with a couple of minutes’ patience, and right now he is too comfortable to consider moving or doing anything about it.

He’s almost drifted off when there are arms around him, under him, lifting him. Four outstretched limbs, coddling and half-carrying him away from the neck-cricking comfort of the sofa, two mouths whispering to each other and murmuring to him, four hands helping him out of clothing that still holds a faintly chemical stink from the day, two bodies curled warm and close around him in the bed. Distantly, he discerns one that runs a little hotter and the other a little cooler, just barely enough to know whose limbs end where.

Cecil guides Earl’s hand up to rest on Carlos’ hip, nudging him gently into the spoon-shape he knows Carlos likes best and sleeps the easiest cuddled against. He slides his own through Carlos’ hair and the other in under the pillows. Earl’s words are already slurring with sleep when he suggests that really, they should get up soon, have something to eat before they sleep properly. He doesn’t make it to the end of the sentence, easing into silence and soft breathing somewhere around ‘linguine, maybe’. Cecil’s nose rests in Carlos’ hairline, lips against his brow.

At some point in the night, his hand slips from Carlos’ hair to Earl’s cheek. At some point, Earl’s hand slips from Carlos’ hip to Cecil’s thigh. Then there’s nothing but the safety of tangled limbs and warm darkness.

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this and fancy a chat some time, my tumblr username is [zigraves](http://zigraves.tumblr.com) \- feel free to stop by and say hello.


End file.
